“Much of our history is not pretty,” Comey said. “At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups.” FBI Director James Comey. (Source: Washington Post via @mboorstein)

While Comey speaks in the context of law enforcement and racial bias, we can also consider systemic biases that affect how law enforcement engages with ethnic communities, and specifically with the Sikh community. Comey’s call for more data around incidents of police violence against members of ethnic communities harkens back to another call for data: one may recall the multi-year campaign to have the FBI even track the hate crimes targeting Sikhs in a specific category (as they did with other targeted communities) that, until recently, was not categorized, hampering the ability for analysis.

“That’s our inheritance as law enforcement, and it is not all in the distant past. We must account for that inheritance. And we — especially those of us who enjoy the privilege that comes with being the majority — must confront the biases that are inescapable parts of the human condition,” he said. “We must speak the truth about our shortcomings as law enforcement and fight to be better.”

…the FBI did not demonstrate that it took the white supremacist movement seriously enough to consider its role in Oak Creek. It certainly hasn’t taken the white supremacy movement any more seriously after Oak Creek than it did before. For the nation’s communities who are targeted by white supremacists and extreme racism every day, this means that the U.S. government is not taking serious action to protect their vulnerabilities.

As we sit over two years since the Oak Creek massacre, it is interesting that the issues regarding law enforcement relations with America’s ethnic communities have taken a new perspective, but we must not lose our own stake in this regard.